


Into the Dark

by AlwaysLera



Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Aftermath, Angst, Bruce Feels, Coping, Dancing, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Gen, I Don't Even Know, POV Alternating, Songfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-14
Updated: 2013-01-14
Packaged: 2017-11-25 12:36:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,675
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/638975
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AlwaysLera/pseuds/AlwaysLera
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After a mission goes poorly, the team sits around in silence. A song on the radio prompts Clint to do something unusual and each team member is moved, in their own way.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Into the Dark

In the wake of the latest mission, Natasha sat silently on the couch, one knee drawn up to her chest, a glass of wine in one of her hands, and the blankest expression that Pepper had ever seen on her face, even considering that Natasha used a cover as Pepper’s PA for awhile and Pepper knew her better than anyone other than Clint in the room. Clint was sitting across from her in a chair, leaning forward, his hands closed around a glass of bourbon, but he was watching her, Pepper could see from her angle. His mouth was pressed into a fine line and he hadn’t sipped his alcohol at all. The mission had gone poorly. They had been fed poor intel and they had made a situation for a dozen schoolchildren held hostage worse by their presence. A few of the children had died. A few others would wish they had died. They had come back to Pepper a broken team. Steve was turning chess pieces over in his hand. Bruce was doing mathematical proofs repetitively, something Pepper had come to realize was his only way of calming himself down without the Other Guy rearing his head. Thor was sitting on the couch, Jane sprawled across his lap looking up at him worriedly.

            The radio played softly in the background because Pepper had put it the local alt station when she was waiting for them to come home and looking over Stark Industries’ annual report. The music had been playing some sort of post eighties funk pop that they had all ignored but the next song on, Pepper knew vaguely. She was sure she had heard it before, or gone to a concert by the band. It was too familiar not to know. Also unmistakably was the way that both Clint and Natasha flinched and tensed at the opening notes.

            Clint sat his bourbon on the table next to him, slipped out of his chair, and crossed the room in two strides to Natasha. He held out his hand without saying a word. She looked up at him, her expression tensing slightly, and he curled his fingers, once, twice, and she set her wine down, uncurling herself from around her own center, and accepted his hand. To Pepper’s surprise, Clint pulled Natasha into a close embrace, closing one hand around hers, slipped an arm around her waist and began to dance with her.

            _Love of mine, someday you will die, but I’ll be close behind. I’ll follow you into the dark…_

            Pepper watched, mesmerized, as they danced slowly around the room, Natasha’s body nestled close to Clint’s, and Clint’s eyes closed, his face against the side of Natasha’s red head. Their bodies fit together like they had danced to the song a hundred times, and as Pepper listened to the lyrics, she thought the song had been written for them. She did not understand what Clint and Natasha had, but watching them move around the room, she felt like she was intruding on the most intimate moment she had witnessed in her life.

            _If Heaven and Hell decide that they both are satisfied, illuminate the No’s on their vacancy signs, if there’s no one beside you when your soul embarks, I’ll follow you into the dark._

            Bruce couldn’t help but watch the couple dance around the room and feel intensely lonely. For whatever Clint and Natasha were, it was more than Bruce had. At the end of a mission, his bed and his arms were lonely and he wasn’t one to complain, he knew exactly what his arms could do to a person, but Clint and Natasha were killers, ruthless and cunning, masters of disguise and deception, and they had found each other in this world. Bruce knew his own lifetime movie was not like Shrek. There was no princess at the end of his strange, distorted fairytale, nor a prince. There was no one that would be beside him when his soul embarked, and no one would follow him into the great beyond. It was not that he was unlovable, except that he was. He watched Clint slow turning Natasha around, and he saw the look on Clint’s face of utter devotion and complete realization of how close he had come to losing Natasha today in the blast.  Had any of them turned and looked at him that way? Who had been holding their breath, pale and uncertain, and then released it, running, then flying towards him when he had emerged from the rubble?

_In Catholic school, as vicious as Roman rule, I got my knuckles bruised by a lady in black. And I held my tongue as she told me, “Son, fear is the heart of love.” So I never went back…_

            Tony watched Pepper watching Clint and Natasha. He never knew what to do when he came back from botched missions. And the truth was in the last year that the Avengers operated autonomously, they hadn’t botched many missions, especially not ones that they took on as an entire team. There were few things that Tony couldn’t do well, and coming home and walking immediately into Pepper’s worried arms was one of them. He couldn’t fight the lingering feelings of doubt, that she would be particularly disappointed in him, that at some point, she would discover what a blindingly egotistical useless ass he was that he couldn’t even save lives with his billionaire dollar supersuit. And part of him worried that she liked Ironman more than she liked Tony Stark. But he worried, too, and feared, that the more he showed his love for her, the worst it would be when he eventually died doing this job. He knew that this was how he went out of the world. It had almost happened a few times thusfar and he was truly lucky. But the Hulk wouldn’t always be there to growl at him and restart his heart and one day, the nuclear blast was going to go off in his arms. One day, someone really was going to build a suit that bested his, as unfathomable as that felt. If he did not run to her, if he did not tell her how much he loved her, especially the way she loved him, then it would be easier for her to move on, at the end.

            _You and me, we’ve seen everything to see, from Bangkok to Calgary, and the soles of your shoes are all worn, the time for sleep is now, there’s nothing to cry because we’ll hold each other soon in the blackest of rooms…_

            Thor knew Jane’s attentions were focused on him, and he knew that he should be turning towards her. He wanted to take her upstairs and remind her that he loved her, that when he was on this planet, there was no other for him, that she grounded him. But then Hawkeye stood up, walked across the room, and held out his hand to Natasha and it was like the entire world came down to that room. In all of Migard there could not be two people who loved each other more or showed it to each other less than those. But perhaps Thor had judged them incorrectly. Perhaps they showed it to each other differently than he was used to. He watched Natasha, who never let anyone touch her, slip wordlessly into the archer’s arms like they had danced to the song wordlessly for their entire lives. Thor knew the look on Natasha’s face. He knew what it felt like to have someone to come home to no matter how complicated the world became. He caught Jane’s hands in his hands, marveled at their smallness, and folded them in his, lifting to them to his mouth so he could kiss them.

            _If Heaven and Hell decide that they both are satisfied, illuminate the no’s on their vacancy signs…_

            Natasha would never balance out that ledger. She knew it now that she was much more likely to die in battle than she was to have a ledger that stayed in the black for much more than a single day. But she had stumbled out of this mission, forgetting that at the end of the day, he was her ledger. He kept her balanced. No matter how they came together, no matter what she remembered and what she forgot, what kept her awake at night and what kept him awake at night, he caught her when she fell and she lifted him up when he stumbled. She turned, swaying against him, letting him lead because sometimes, she was exhausted, and sometimes, she wanted to be held. It had taken her too long to realize that she was no less weak and no less compromised if she let herself have what she not only wanted, but needed. She would follow him anywhere.

            _If there’s no one beside you when your soul embarks, then I will follow you into the dark. I will follow you into the dark._

            Clint knew the definition of compromised. The definition of compromised was the edges of the woman in his arms, from the slopes of her strong and able shoulders to the length of her spine to the small of her back to her ass and her thighs that could kill a man in ten seconds flat, to the palms of her hands, her fingertips, the blue of her eyes under long lashes, and her scarlet locks that hung, tangled and tired around her, smelling like sweat and blood when he breathed her in. Compromised was not a word, it was a feeling, a sensation, an acknowledgement, a person, a past, a history. All his life he had been warned about being compromised. But in that moment, dancing to their song, in a room full of people who had their backs, Clint thought he wanted nothing more than to be compromised for the rest of his life and if there was something after this life, he would see her there.

            

**Author's Note:**

> I don't even know what this was other than a desire to get this particular image out of my head. 
> 
> The song is I Will Follow You Into the Dark by Death Cab for Cutie (as covered by a bajillion people, but in my head, they're listening to the original one)


End file.
